Permaculture demonstration garden

Since 2014 Macquarie University Sustainability
has been working on creating an onsite sustainable garden that incorporates permaculture
gardening design principles based on the natural/organic gardening concepts by
Bill Mollison and David
Holmgren. You can access the Bill Mollison
Permaculture Lecture Series for free online.

Permaculture is essentially an
amalgamation of the words “Permanent Agriculture”. It combines landscape
architecture with sustainable agriculture and ecological principles. Permaculture
designs incorporate natural elements such as sun, landscape, wind, rainfall,
and climate, with the aim of maximising benefits to people and planet. This involves strategic placement of beds and
plants to maximise taste, nutrients and yield whilst minimising effort, inputs
and disease. Living in this way also benefits the local environment by enhancing
habitat and biodiversity, and minimising water and energy consumption.

What we’re doing here at Macquarie Sustainability
is promoting sustainable use of space by using small-scale permaculture gardening
principles. We use the space for hosting permaculture workshops, working bees,
and harvesting the literal fruits of our labour!

Design Elements

Mandala Garden

Herb spiral

Espalier fence section

Green wall garden

Water tank

Compost & Worm farm

More elements are planned to be implemented in the future.

Mandala garden

Did you know the term “Mandala” actually means circle, which has its origin
in Sanskrit? The mandala circle design is a concentric geometric structure that
symbolises unity and peace. The circle can be formed of various shapes such as
hexagons, triangles and squares etc.

The benefits of the mandala design is that the gardener can get easy
access to the produce without tramping on the garden bed, plus all of the
plants are within easy reach by hand.

Crop rotation is utilised in the Mandala garden. There are five hexagonal shaped garden
beds available for planting. A rotational system benefits both the plant and
the soil. The plant benefits from better pest and disease protection, and the
soil is well nourished with nutrients from the varied planting seasons. See our
detailed planting and growing schedule here.

Herb spiral

The herb spiral is basically a type of vertical garden
that can save space while offering many varied growing conditions. The circle
shape offers both sun and shaded positions, whilst the gravity drainage from top
to bottom creates perfect conditions for dry plants on top and moisture-loving
plants (and even a pond) at the bottom.

Wicking bed

Wicking beds water plants from below rather than above. They are garden
beds with a built-in water reservoir at the base, similar to the self-watering
pots available on the market. This is ideal for use year round and especially
during the hot summer seasons where the rate of water evaporation and
transpiration is high.

Our wicking bed is made up of up-cycled
wooden frames (treated to prevent rotting). The interior consists of pond liner
and a layer of pebbles (as the water reservoir), separated by a layer of
landscaping cloth, with soil and compost layer on top. This provides a perfect
condition for growing an edible food garden, as the underground water
encourages deep root growth below ground, and therefore large foliage above
ground.

Vertical garden

Vertical gardens maximise space usage. By growing plants on the external
wall spaces of the building, microclimates are created for the local organisms
and plants.

We
have 36 x garden wall trays for the planting of seedlings. They are ideal for
small plants and plants that require good water drainage (since the structure
is off the ground!)

Water tank

An 1180 Litre slimline water tank was
installed onsite to promote the harvesting and use of natural rainwater as the
preferred irrigation source for the Permaculture Demonstration Garden.

Compost and worm farms

All food scraps and coffee grounds from
the Sustainability Cottage go into our compost bin or one of the two worm
farms. Once per week, the compost and worm farms are watered, and the compost
is turned with a corkscrew tool. Mature composts and worm farms generate humus
(dark decayed organic material), which provides healthy ecology and structure back
into to the soil. Additionally, worm farms produce liquid castings or “worm
juice”, a complete plant food rich in nitrogen fixing bacteria, liquid minerals
and trace elements. We dilute the “worm juice” with water at a ratio of about
1:10 until it looks like a weak tea, and water the garden with this solution
about once per month.